I don't know why you didn't just fund NASA properly.

Independent untill the party decides they're not independent. (Eg).

Again another non-sequitor that has nothing to do with the topic at hand. Nobody disagrees that China doesn't like people publicly criticizing their government.

That has rigorously NOTHING to do with the normal operation of companies that do not engage with politics in China, which is what I was talking about before you barged in.

Also, it is the US that has been kidnapping people into unmarked vans and arresting people at airport, detaining them for however long, and deporting them to countries that aren't their own for as little as having a meme criticizing the current US regime.

So really, which one is the dictatorship?

The sooner we stop seeing China as enemies, the better. We need them more than ever now that the US has decided to go full mask off.

BYD is free to operate as it wishes in China, along with several millions of other companies. And their products are good.

I don't know why you didn't just fund NASA properly.

that do not engage with politics in China

There's no such thing. A person nor company can unilaterally decide "not to engage with politics", as politics engages with them in thousands of ways. The best they can do is self-censorship, which, even when successfull, is in itself a form of political engagement.

which one is the dictatorship?

False dichotomy

We need them more than ever now that the US has decided to go full mask off.

Who's "we" in this case? And why would they "need" someone now, because of stuff in the US?

I don't think that has ever been true, really. Nor should it be, Laissez Faire is a trainwreck waiting to happen, probably literally and figuratively.

Textbooks will tell you that the USA, and other countries like China and Russia, are a regulated "Market System" which in some markets teeters on strict Oligopoly.

China would love so much to rule the world, that’s why it hasn’t entered any war in the past 40+ years

The Hundred-Year Marathon - Wikipedia

(en.wikipedia.org)

the global south are happy to enter the comparably advantageous economic deals

are they happy? and are the deals advantageous? can you back up your claims?

As for “dictator”, look at the approval rates of Xi in China

oh yes, the approval rating of a dictator in a dictatorship is very valid metric . (hint hint: they are irrelevant even if they were not fixed. any kind of approval rating bears zero relevance to whether the country is a totalitarian state or not, or whether the country is a threat to its neighbours or not).

Xi became president for life almost a decade ago, Putin ignored term limits in like 2008. Musk is failing to do what they have done, and he doesn't even express any real power over the president given he hid his role from the courts and left the white house with a black eye.

And? I concede that both of them are doing their best to end US as a superpower, but when was the last time either of them cost the US $500 Billion in tax revenue as well putting 283,000 Americans out of work in just 4 months? Again this all goes back to a car company that isn't run by Xi or Putin. Tesla is run by a Nazi.

The report shows that “DOGE Actions” led to 283,172 job cuts in the first four months of 2025, and “DOGE Downstream Impact” was cited as the reason for another 6,945 job losses, which the report indicates largely come from non-profits and education organizations.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/irs-cuts-doge-musk-watchdog-b2776213.html

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5278325-doge-layoffs-job-cuts-report/

USA could have spent money developing an electrified economy but the republicans are focusing on bringing back coal mining and reshoring shoe manufacturing instead.

This admin has set the USA back 100 years.

ETA - what I mean is that China is rampaging on in electrification, developing manufacturing skills, infrastructure, and design/engineering/technology around renewables and electrification. Europe is thinking about it but not going crazy to the extent China is, because legacy - China doesn’t have 100 years of cars and 150 years of trains; they’re building new. USA meanwhile is actively regressing under Republican policies.

It would be under NASA, but the argument is moot, since it wouldn't happen under a MAGA Nazi administration. It will have to wait until Americans take back our government. Then we can nationalize Space X, confiscate the DOGE Goblin's fortune, and deport him back to South Africa.

You could make the argument that Russian interference helped give us Trump in 2016 and that Chinese Military run TikTok's promotion helped him in 2024, so yes those two actually did do that pretty recently, yeah.

Government agencies can't bribe as good. Our politicians are whipped dogs who sell the free world for less than an F-150 a year in kickbacks.

You sure could argue that. Correlation doesn't equal causation. You could also contribute trump's 2024 win to the 10 million less democrats who decided not to vote. I doubt all 10 million of those were because of tiktok.

musk didn't own twitter or contribute $220 million to trump's campaign in 2016 either.

This is one of the reason that the USA being heavy handed with Chinese is going to bite us in the ass. While in the USA, we bury our heads in the sand and GM, Tesla and etc. all crank out $95,000 giant trucks/SUVs, some companies in China are making very, very affordable vehicles. These aren't necessarily garbage either -- there's models available for almost any price point.

What WOULD be really smart and forward thinking is if in the USA, the domestic brands also make some affordable models to get EV more popular. However, they are addicted to fat profit margins, and thanks to all the protectionism, they don't need to worry about offshore models being "better".

While other nations either develop and/or import affordable EVs, we're effectively banning them. This is all going to end up with a giant wake up call for American auto-manufacturers when the protections/tariffs are ultimately lifted and they HAVE to compete.

I think it would be great if the tariffs came with huge incentives for domestic manufacturers and motivated them to be competitive. Instead, it's just letting them segment the market for a few years and make a killing. Who loses? The people...

I used to like and look up to SpaceX for the interesting stuff that they build,

but nowadays i don't care anymore. The company can fail for all i care. Musk spoiled it.

The tipping point, for me personally, was when Musk seriously threatened to slash public spending in February this year. It shows a clear disrespect to the people, and frankly, a sociopathic attitude.

Musk had everything, lots of money, lots of fame, lots of influence, but he threw it all away when he decided to threaten the wellbeing and lifelyhood of a lot of people just so that rich assholes can make an extra buck through tax cuts.

but saying that a Chinese company isn't "under the control of Xi Jinping", the guy who crushed Hong Kong for having too much independence and wants to do the same with Taiwan, is laughable.

Just take that sentence at face value and consider the ridiculousness of actually believing the guy alone has that amount of crushing power.

You're just regurgitating unfounded US propaganda which, this being Lemmy, is very unfortunate to see.

That's actually a bit of a myth you know. Labour in China used to be dirt cheap 30 years ago but that's not the case now. You need experts to build cars and they demand an appropriate salary. They probably don't get paid as much as they would in the west but they're not being paid pennies an hour either. However the idea that China is cheap has persisted.

There's a reason that Apple doesn't make the iPhone there anymore. It was getting too expensive ie they were being asked to pay for a decent wage, and they weren't prepared to.